In American pop culture, at least, when some spooky person is about to call from forth from the outer dark some drooling supernatural nastiness, that person is likely to conduct the event in Latin. One of my favorite moments ever in Buffy the Vapire Slayer is when Giles says, “Xander, don’t speak Latin in front of the books.” I can understand how it happens that Latin fills this role, though I continue to be intrigued by it.
In Japanese pop culture (and, I think Chinese), magical undertakings take place via complex mudras (fiddly hand gestures, via Buddhism I imagine), and possibly charm symbols based on elaborated and deformed characters (in red ink, on yellow paper).
What do wizards in Greece speak? Russia? etc., usw., κτλ.. Contemporary (and bookish) practicers of magic in the West continue to follow certain habits laid down by their Hellenistic forefathers (a certain esthetic to sigils, certain ways of deforming normal writing). Early Greco-Roman magic, however, involved lots of giant nonsense words made up, usually, of mostly vowels. This seems to have been dropped in the West. I’m curious to know if it persists in the popular understanding of magic elsewhere.
I would venture, unencumbered by the thought process (as the Tappit brothers would say), that outside the Civilized World the supernatural is natural, so they probably address it with the equivalent of “Yo, Billy-Bob”.
The American Indians of Hispanic persuasion have adopted a virgencita or santito to tend to all of their supernatural needs, to whom they talk quite casually, and you’ve probably heard about the Black Brasilians’ candomblés.
Reading this topic, I just realized that “magic” is not the same everywhere.
In east Mediterranean Sea, the goal is not to communicate with the world beyond, nor does any ghost exist or want any one to gain supernatural power. These things belong rather to the Anglo-Saxon sphere. Here, people are dealing with more banal things of the world we all know and are familiar with; like health, marriage or good luck in your profession. I happened to watch a documentary on TV some month ago, and was impressed that things didn’t change much from the days of ancient Egypt (which “magic” influenced ancient Greece) and nowadays. Almost the same methods are used today as well, with small or not at all alterations. Your grandma makes a talisman and you have to wear it so to gain your health back or not get sick at all. To put more power to this talisman, it has to be kept in a secret hole outside the church (behind the altar) for 3 days, best from Friday to Sunday, the days Jesus was among the dead and than resurrected. We see than official religion plays a huge role on all this, though officially Christianity is fighting magic. The same you’ll need to wear a white-red cord in your arm twist to be safe from sun burning. Like in ancient Greece, you’ll need to sacrifice a cock on the basement of your house, whereas the priest of the village will read some psalms and sacred passages from the bible. Like those days of ancient Greece, people still keep traveling to special locations of famous temples, (like the did travel to Delos or Delphi), to sleep overnight inside a church (dedicated to some saint) praying to God to get back his health. There aren’t any special spells used, either in Latin or any other language, other than what’s written in the bible.
Though lately many ‘professional’ magicians (better called charlatans) will use “magic” as it is practiced in Western Europe and America, influenced more by motion pictures and modern cult literature, but still I didn’t heard them using any spell at all, in Latin or not.
in short, magic is any practice which compells the ‘supernatural’ to act for the ‘practitioner.’ It can have various forms according to culture. Usually, at least in the popular view of magic, practitioners of magic want a certain aura of mystery, so they use the more ‘mystical’ language(verbal or otherwise). If everybody knew latin in western society, it wouldn’t be used in ‘magical’ practices. But… Some people indeed use the local vernacular in their rites, although in movies, fake ‘magic’ and ‘darker’ magic(especially the two former), one will find language (verbal, otherwise) more obscure, meant to provide a feeling of mysticism and mystery.
When someone prays to God to get back their health, it is a form of religion, which beseeches the ‘supernatural’ to act for the ‘practitioner’ (Magic and religion are oft combined.)
Many modern pagans use the vernacular in their rites. A friend of mine follows Asatru, and he uses english… Though he doesn’t use ‘spells’ (I think ‘spells’, as Thomas pointed out, are used mainly by charlatans and movies)… He believes that it is the power behind the words, not the words themselves, which compell his gods to act. (although, like most magics or religions, he frequently asks his gods to act [i.e. prays])
interesting stuff
You’d think it’d be that straightforward. When I asked my question I was eliding some subtleties, and now there are anthropologists all over the world who feel a disturbance in the force and suddenly feel compelled to leave off sampling the local hallucinogens and come pound the tar out of me for asking the question badly.
So, there’s a difference between what I’d call “folk magic” (if I didn’t want to be clubbed to death with cultural artifacts by enraged anthropologists), which is apparently ubiquitous in time and culture, and a more bookish variety, such as ceremonial magic in the West. My question was more about ideas about the scholarly sort of magic.
Chinese Daoist magic is very elaborate and studied, involving endless consultation of astrological data, fussy and obscure ingredients laid out in precise ways. The language is Chinese, though there may be possession which can be noisy and babbling (though is likely to include a critique of the ritual’s correctness, which I love).
He believes that it is the power behind the words, not the words themselves, which compell his gods to act.
I suspect that’s a fairly modern idea. It is precisely the opposite which I suspect accounts for the use of Latin. I can easily name several religious traditions in which it is widely believed that the sound of the words are themselves potent, whether you know the meaning or not. Sometimes this is endorsed by clergy, sometimes not. In any case, it seems related to the idea that if you can just get the right name of something you have power over it. It is the power of the Indo-european bard to get those words right, and so accomplish things.
This reminds me of a comment my European History teacher made the other day - something like “Nowadays we all thinks religion is about having a good conscience, but back then religion was about doing the right thing. If you did the Catholic ritual when you should have done the Protestant ritual, you were going to hell. If Catholicism was the one true faith, then all children of Protestant marriages were bastads.” Hence all the bloody religious wars.
I think we see here the influence of the Catholic Church, which persisted for so long to use only Latin in liturgy. As if only through Latin one is able to communicate with the deity. Even today some parts of Sunday mess still are in Latin or Greek. There were many attempts to use a translation for “Kyrie Eleison”, but non succeeded. (We see here, “Kyrie Eleison” serves exactly like the spells in magic ) In eastern Church the case is quite different. The bible was translated from eginning in different lagauages, like Arab, Persian, Slavonic, Chinese and never was any persistence in Greek or Latin stated. From the Catholic Church the alchemists took this habit anf we have today the magicians.
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He believes that it is the power behind the words, not the words themselves, which compell his gods to act.
I suspect that’s a fairly modern idea
Indeed, my friend does practice in a modern fashion.
Silly me for not thinking this earlier, but, as far as spells go, the Ancient (and most modern practitioners of ‘pure’ Asatru, my aforementioned friend excluded… he may be considered more of a Wiccan with a liking for Frey) Norse ‘magicians’ would chant galdr to access that particular power. Galdarinn would be spells, since it was the formation of the words themselves which did the magic.
I know you know, but did you know Sanskrit was believed to be created by some wise men (semi-gods), and the sounds of the words are supposed to have an effect over the world? (i.e. the mantras have effects over the chakras, &c.)
Most Veneral Bard, this ‘friend’ of mine lives in the same town as I do, was my best friend during highschool, was the other guitarist in a band I was in, and we started learning latin together. Alas, he has never gone further than ch. 4… but he remains my friend nevertheless.
I forgot the reason for me being called Ten Fingers, but it cracks me up.
…but did you know Sanskrit was believed to be created by some wise men (semi-gods)…
I’m reading a book about (among other things. ) certain megalithic peoples. Its really quite interesting and there was some stuff in there about PIE being influenced by the language of a different race of people. Now the authors claim that the people of different race are in fact the Nephilim and Nophilim of Old Testament fame… I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it’s interesting. Apparently some really tall ‘european’ men (i.e. Nephilim) were found in the Himalayas somewhere, the ‘Cherchin’ man or something, and the authors try to find a link between this Cherchin man and the megalithic Grooved Ware people of Britain and Europa. It’s rather interesting, really.
I’m glad to hear about your friend, Deude. I was afraid that he might be the kind of friend that folks tell the doctor about when they have the crabs and go “Doc, I have this friend with an itch in his pudendals…” “Really? Do I know him?”
I love the customized ads this thread is bringing. My favorite is “Love Spells Guaranteed. Specializes in all love problems. Serious cases only.” We should start funky new threads just to see what kind of ads they attract.
Nope, never had the crabs. I tried to get my friend to come to this site so he can talk about his crabs problem in latin, though. Oh well, he’s casting spells on those vile creatures as we spea… well, communicate, anyway… Speaking of spells… Harrius Potter Camellaque Ignifera comes out on the first hour of this thursday… ‘My friend’ bought tickets for it last week… right after he went to the doctor about his crabs.
Yes. They had vowels in the language, you just cannot write them with hieroglyphs. When they lifted the Greek alphabet - and added a few more letters for things like sh, f, etc. - they did write the vowels. With gusto.
) In eastern Church the case is quite different. The bible was translated from eginning in different lagauages, like Arab, Persian, Slavonic, Chinese and never was any persistence in Greek or Latin stated. From the Catholic Church the alchemists took this habit anf we have today the magicians.
